Sustainability
Sustainable Business
There’s no more important way to look at our purpose in action, than to see how we address the environment.
Creating a safe and secure world together can only happen in a safe and secure environment. It’s not an alternative to good business outcomes but part of good business outcomes. It’s core to everything we believe in.
David Lockwood
Chief Executive Officer
Babcock International Group 2023
Sustainability is an integral part of our corporate strategy and how we do business and underpins our corporate Purpose: to create a safe and secure world, together.
Our five ESG priorities provide a framework for integrating sustainability into the business and ensure that we play our part in minimising risk, reducing our environmental footprint, contributing to our communities and transitioning to a more sustainable future for all.
ESG priorities
Over the last year we have progressed our corporate Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy and ensured progress towards our commitments and our five ESG priorities; these provide a framework for integrating sustainability into the business and ensure that we play our part in minimising risk, reducing our environmental footprint, contributing to our communities and transitioning to a more sustainable future for all.
Materiality assessment
We continue to conduct materiality assessments to identify the issues that matter most to our stakeholders and to Babcock. In 2022/23 we extended our materiality assessment to include the views of some of our key customers and suppliers and noted some investor priorities have changed whilst employee views were unchanged. Please see page 61 of our annual report for more details.
Following this year’s strategic climate risk assessment, the Executive Committee has categorised Climate as a principal risk.
Find out more about our materiality assessment.
View our sustainability summary.
ESG and our shareholders
Over the year we have progressed our ESG strategy and ensured progress on our corporate commitments while furthering our disclosure on key sustainability interests in line with best practice and regulation. This year we have continued to develop our approach to ESG reporting and enhanced the level of transparency providing further insight into a range of economic, social and environmental impacts.
Certain ESG agencies and investment funds have identified internal screening policies to minimise their portfolio’s exposure to controversial weapons activities. To enable compliance with their requirements, we disclose key ESG metrics to measure our exposure to these activities as percentage of revenue.
Social value
The social value model covers both Environmental and Social issues and therefore falls under the purview of sustainability. Babcock manages social value on a contract-by-contract basis so the communities where our operations occur gain the benefit of the activities.
We commissioned Oxford Economics to show how Babcock is supporting levelling up across the UK by investing and supporting employment in the most deprived areas between March 2021 and March 2022.
Progress vs ESG commitments and targets
Progress versus commitments and targets is overseen at a group level by the Corporate ESG committee to ensure that Babcock improves its ESG Performance.
See our ESG targets and commitments.
Our Charter
The ESG sustainability strategy is supported by six pillars. These are shown in our Sustainability Charter along with an explanation of each pillar as described below.
ENVIRONMENT
- Clean inputs
- Responsible consumption
SOCIAL
- Community engagement
- People and potential
GOVERNANCE
- Diverse and robust supply chains
- Commercial Integrity
A visual representation of this charter, often called Babcock’s sustainability wheel, can be seen on the link below
View our Sustainability Charter.
Sustainability reporting
Sustainability reporting is intended to provide transparency and further insight of a company’s contribution towards the global sustainability agenda. The reporting is focused on the economic, environmental and social impacts.
Download our GRI and SASB report